Repeated quizzes in an online class do lift short-term recall, but each repeat loses students — and applying the material takes conversation, not testing

When COVID-19 forced a strategic communication planning course fully online, the instructors asked whether interactive media — a presentation website, videos, competitive quizzes and weekly pre- and post-tests — actually helped master's students remember the content and apply it in their projects, and which format helped with which.

A one-group pre-test/post-test quasi-experiment with 23 first-year students on an international master's programme, in course 2800575 during the final semester of academic year 2021, taught entirely over Zoom. Tools: the myCourseVille learning system for weekly multiple-choice pre- and post-tests; Adobe Spark web presentations; recorded lectures on YouTube; Kahoot quizzes in two rounds (during weeks 1–11 and again before the final exam with the same questions); student interviews across the 16-week term; paired t-tests for score comparisons. Quiz scores did not count towards grades, and students were told so in advance.

• Scores after the interactive media were significantly higher than before: overall mean 6.77 → 8.20 (a difference of 1.42; t = 5.905; p < 0.001; n = 23).
• Week by week, though, it did not work every time. Planning tests rose significantly in 5 of 11 weeks; decision-guide tests in 7 of 10. The rest rose without reaching significance.
• Repeating did not add more. A second run of the same test scored 8.77 against 8.19 (not significant, p = 0.085); the second Kahoot round scored 6.30 against 6.46 in the first (not significant, p = 0.422), and participation fell from roughly 10–20 students to 4–10. The authors read this as boredom with repeated testing and the fact that scores did not count.
• Students said themselves that quizzes helped short-term memory, not application to their projects. What helped application was live exchange with the instructor and classmates on Zoom, supporting documents (sample plans, case studies, plan-writing guidelines) and direct feedback from the instructor.
• Students asked for slides as plain PDF files to take notes on, even though a web presentation with embedded videos and links was provided — which the authors relate to cognitive load theory: media that attracts too much attention diverts mental resources from the content.
• The authors recommend fewer memory-focused tests, more varied question types, one platform for quizzes, and a live discussion roughly every 30 minutes of lecture.

For online teaching: frequent testing works for recall, but the returns fall off fast — the second quiz added almost nothing and lost half the room. Applying knowledge came from conversation and real tasks with the instructor as adviser, not from media that looked sophisticated. And the tool students asked for was the most basic one, a file they could annotate, a reminder that “interactive” does not automatically mean “learned better”.